Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Speakers often use modifiers (e.g., color) to distinguish objects, even when such details are unnecessary. Overspecification was traditionally viewed as inefficient, but contemporary accounts suggest it may be adaptive because modifiers can aid comprehension. Prior work also shows that modifier use changes with age, with older adults overspecifying more than younger adults. However, little is known about modifier use across the lifespan, including middle adulthood, or in realistic settings, as most studies rely on simple 2D displays. To address these gaps, we examined referential production across the adult lifespan in an immersive virtual environment, where participants described everyday objects paired with either a competitor differing in color or state, or an unrelated object. Overall, participants exhibited high overspecification rates, with only a modest increase in middle and older ages and no robust age effects on expression length or modifier use, offering new insights into real-world communication across the adult lifespan.